When Tia McGee saw a sticky note outside her Day Hall dorm room in late November, her heart dropped.

McGee’s first thought was that someone had written hateful language on the note, similar to what had been scrawled on a bathroom mirror and a light fixture in her residence hall earlier that month.

“I was just like ‘Oh my God, they put something on my door too,’” said McGee, a freshman living on the sixth floor of Day.

Racial slurs against Black and Asian people were found written on floors four and six of Day between Nov. 7-8. The slurs were two of at least 32 racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic incidents that have occurred at or near Syracuse University since early November.

Of the 32 reported incidents, eight took place on floors three, four, five and six of Day, an all-freshman dorm that houses about 615 students. The incidents in the residence hall have targeted Black and Asian people and members of the LGBT+ community.

“Then I looked around, and I saw everybody’s doors,” said McGee, who is Black. “(The notes) said: ‘you’re loved,’ ‘you’re special,’ ‘you’re beautiful.’”

Emily Steinberger | Design Editor

Sticky notes similar to the one on McGee’s door now cover the hallways and doors of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth floors of Day, where some international students and students of color live. Fourth floor residents have also created posters with positive messages to tape on walls in the lounge.

“We as a floor kind of came together and embraced the positivity that we have among each other,” said David Havens, a freshman living on floor four of Day. “So then that turned our atmosphere a little more inclusive and it was a little less heavy and more bright.”

Wenhui Li, an international Chinese student living in Day, said she found the sticky notes warm and cheerful at a time when racial attacks angered her and her floormates.

While the messages contain colorful images and positive messages such as “there is no room for hate here,” many students living in Day said they still feel tension on their floors.

Josh Rosendo, a resident on the fourth floor of Day, said the hate incidents have strained his relationships with his neighbors because no one knows who’s responsible for the acts. His hallmates made and put up the positive posters near the lounge after homophobic graffiti was found in the hall Feb. 21.

Chancellor Kent Syverud announced in February that the university has identified and held accountable three students for acts of hate. Some perpetrators have been punished with suspensions, he said. It is unclear which hate incidents the individuals were found responsible for.

Emily Steinberger | Design Editor

“Walking down the halls, now we don’t want to say hi to people (because) we think it might be (them),” Rosendo said. “It’s horrible, pointing fingers at each other. But it is what we’re doing now because we want to know who it is.”

After the initial incidents were discovered, students on floors four and six of Day attended mandatory meetings involving both floors individually and together. Several students who lived on the affected floors said Department of Public Safety officers knocked on their doors the night after any hate incident occurred to ask if students had any information.

Many students said the environment on their floors was confusing and quiet in the days after the first incidents occurred. Several students added that DPS officers did not immediately provide them with enough information to understand why officers were concerned, which added to the commotion.

“We didn’t really know what had happened immediately after, and it was very solemn,” said Ava Janese, a resident on floor four of Day. “We didn’t know how to act because the message that DPS or anyone above us was basically that it was someone on our floor or one of the ones above or below us.”

Following the incidents on the fourth and sixth floors, two instances of racist graffiti were reported on the fifth floor of Day between Nov. 18 and Nov. 21.

Michaela Varvis, a student living on the fifth floor, said she looked at everyone she encountered differently in the days after the incidents occurred.

“You don’t necessarily expect the people you’re in the elevator with to be racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic,” Varvis said. “It makes me angry every time I get a bias-incident email, especially when it happens in Day. I don’t like feeling like my neighbors or the people I walk past in the hall are bad people.”

Emily Steinberger | Design Editor

Although DPS has been conducting an ongoing investigation of the incidents in Day since the first hate incidents occurred in November, DPS officers discovered racist and homophobic graffiti on three separate instances between January and February of this year.

Many students said they still fear if another incident will occur.

“There’s the tension of waiting for the next email to drop,” said Lindsey Singer, who lives on floor five of Day. “The question is always, “When is it going to happen again?’”

Singer said she doesn’t want to think anyone from her hall could be responsible for the bias incidents.

Ivan Palacio and Sahir Sarna, roommates living in Day, also hope that no one from their floor could have been involved in any of the hate incidents. The possibility that they could be living with the person responsible, and that they could commit another incident at any time, is always in the back of their minds.

“There is an uneasy feeling because it can happen again at any time,” Sarna said.

Palacio said people have been more careful about how they talk about issues of race both in person and online since the November incidents occurred. Residents appear more antsy during in-person interactions, he added.

McGee said she knew hate incidents would eventually happen on campus. She didn’t think it would happen so quickly into her freshman year or in a place she should have been able to call a home, she said.

Despite positive reinforcement from her floormates and resident advisor, McGee said she still feels uneasy when she returns to her dorm every night.

“It makes you feel unsafe,” she said. “Is there anywhere where I can be comfortable? Where is my safe space?”

Published on March 11, 2020 at 10:47 pm

Contact Richard: rjchang@syr.edu | @RichardJChang1